Boiler Room: an hour with SPFDJ (DJ Mix)

Boiler Room: an hour with SPFDJ (DJ Mix)

From the chugging heavy-metal guitars that open the mix, it’s clear that SPFDJ’s an hour with session for Boiler Room and Apple Music is not going to be your typical techno set. But then, SPFDJ is hardly your typical techno DJ. Since the mid-2010s, the Swedish-born, Berlin-based selector Lina Jonsson has developed a reputation for meting out dance-floor stormers with apocalyptic flair and cheerfully rebellious attitude. She credits her subversive, open-minded style to an upbringing that encompassed all sorts of genres: indie, R&B, grime, old-school garage. “Until I found techno, there wasn’t really a genre that stuck with me for very long,” she told Boiler Room Radio. Still, she admits, “The harder groove of techno is what I mainly get off on.” And Jonsson does play hard: The full span of her 69-minute set is a 140-plus-BPM maelstrom of gabber-strength kicks, flayed 909 hi-hats, and pile-driving snares. Manni Dee’s “The Wolves” buzzes like a fire alarm at the gates of hell; the unidentified “ID2” is part ghetto house, part earthmover. And False Witness and Shyboi’s “Sub Bully,” an early highlight, rains down rave stabs like a Greek god tossing lightning bolts off Mount Olympus. But what really distinguishes most of her selections isn’t just their force but their fun—a quality she attributes to her long residency at Berlin’s Herrensauna, a famously off-the-rails queer party. “This community is so flamboyant and full of character,” she said. “People don’t take themselves as seriously as other techno ravers, and it really translates to the vibe on the dance floor.” In this case, it translates outside the club, too. Recording the set at home, she said, “I felt like I was going back to before I was touring a lot, when I made some of my very first mixes and there was none of that club experience to back it up.” In other words: raw, heartfelt, and in love with the simple thrill of the music itself.

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